


A Close Shave

by Castillon02



Category: James Bond - Ian Fleming
Genre: M/M, Moonraker - Freeform, Shaving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 16:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19930951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Castillon02/pseuds/Castillon02
Summary: Bond's crush on Drax leads him into an intimate situation.





	A Close Shave

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of years ago we were reading Moonraker in the MI6 Cafe Discord and someone (Sven??) challenged me to do the Skyfall shaving scene but with Bond and his crush/nemesis from the book, Hugo Drax. Thanks for the inspiration, guys! :D

Hugo Drax. The builder of the Moonraker. The savior of the western world, as the newspapers called him. Bond couldn’t believe that a mission had afforded them the opportunity to meet. He had to investigate, of course, but part of that investigation involved interviewing Drax, and if Bond happened to make that first priority, despite the early hour of his arrival, well, no one could fault him. He knocked on Drax’s bedroom door.

After a moment, it opened.

“Mr. Bond, I presume,” Drax said. Drax stood a couple of inches taller, a couple of inches broader in the shoulders than Bond himself. The red hair on his head stopped at those shoulders, and on his face it erupted in an enormously bushy moustache and whiskers. His square face, scarred over much of the right half due to war wounds, expressed no surprise at Bond’s presence.

Said face was, however, half-covered in shaving foam, and Drax was dressed in nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist, so it seemed to Bond that perhaps his visit was unexpected after all.

“Come in, come in,” Drax said. “I have precisely ten minutes until the next shift begins; you’ll see the timer on the dresser. I’m afraid that’s all I can spare—the Moonraker’s launch is very nearly upon us.” He led Bond to his bathroom mirror.

“And all of Britain is grateful for it, sir,” Bond said, nodding his head to show his understanding of the importance of the rocket that would be Britain’s primary defense against atomic threats. The fact that Drax had conceived of the rocket on his own, had built it with his own funds—Bond was sure he was speaking to a future prime minister. “Let me,” he said impulsively, reaching out for the straight razor lying next to the foamy brush on the sink. 

“Oh?” Drax asked. His eyes, mismatched in size thanks to the botched facial reconstruction on the right side, seemed to scrutinize him. One of his big blunt hands stopped just short of where Bond had picked up the razor.

Bond nearly flushed. Too intimate, of course it was—but he had never been one to back down. “I’ll shave and ask you a question, then stop so you can answer it,” he said, determined. “I’m sure it would be awkward trying to conduct an interview otherwise.” 

Drax’s scarred, brilliant face twisted in a half smile. “Of course it would be. I appreciate your service.” He sat on the edge of the sink, holding himself still. Waiting.

Bond was about to take a razor to the most brilliant man in Britain, to a war hero and a millionaire who had singlehandedly ensured their country’s security.

(To a man who’d had a suspicious death on his property, to a man whose staff already seemed a bit off, his mind whispered. To a man who cheated at cards, as he’d seen at Blades the other night. But Bond bristled at those thoughts. Of course there could be nothing wrong with Drax. He was just one of those eccentric geniuses, that was all.)

“I’m sure that I’ll be in Her Majesty’s best hands,” Drax said, his lips twitching in another crooked smile. “Eight minutes now, Mr. Bond. Show me what an old seadog like you can do.”

Bond lifted the razor’s edge to Drax’s neck and scraped it down the line of his beard, watched the way his pupils grew big in those mismatched eyes. He smiled. “I think you’ll find that Navy men know a few good tricks,” he said. “Efficient ones.”

***

He remembered those words later while watching a different count down timer. The fraudulent Moonraker made its skewed descent and he and Gala Brand clung to each other in the hot steam from the launch. Drax must have been so smug, feeling Bond’s razor at his throat, watching the Service's investigator attend to him so thoroughly! 

Ultimately, Bond’s tricks had done for him, though, as surely as a blade through Drax’s carotid would have. There was some comfort to be had in that.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! <3 Constructive criticism is welcome.


End file.
